by Ben Langdon
“Your sister’s got a friend,” he said.
“That’s Andy.”
“No kidding,” Dan said. “Are you girls spies or something?”
They both giggled and the blonde one nodded in a general way.
“You sure look the part,” he said.
“We’re waiting for Miranda,” Donna said.
“Miranda Brody,” Asi added, and then they both seemed overcome with something.
“The singer?” Dan asked.
“She’s staying across the road.”
He’d been hearing the name all day. Miranda Brody was an American celebrity and Dan figured that meant she spent her life gracing covers of magazines, entering mild controversies, and living it up without a care in the world. She was the singer-type celebrity which meant she probably had a manufactured, inoffensive and marketable sound. Dan hadn’t really heard her music, at least he didn’t think he had, but he figured he knew the type.
“She’s on the sixteenth floor.”
“And she’s only here for one concert.”
“Do you want to come in?”
Dan smiled at the girls and stepped back. Apart from the pop music which was now playing inside the room, the oblivious older sister getting it on with her boyfriend, the girls were barely pubescent and he had enough problems without stepping inside and possibly having his hair braided while they all chatted about Miranda Brody.
“Ah, look, I’ve got to get back to my deliveries,” he said, shouldering his satchel again. “But good luck with the celebrity watch. I hope you get to see her. And don’t get your sticky fingers all over the windows. This place is really serious about that stuff.”
He left them with the pizza and pop star, moving quickly to the elevator. Inside he allowed himself to scramble the music with his mind, reducing the repetitive sounds to static and then silence. He closed his eyes and felt the elevator moving slowly down to street level again. He tried not to think about his grandfather.
When Dan stepped out into the night he noticed two things had changed: the street was now thick with photographers, lights and film crews, and his bike was blocked in by the double-parked media. The electrical spikes from phones, satellite hook-ups and excess lights were almost as irritating as the bursts of camera flash. It had taken less than ten minutes to deliver the pizza but now his entire night would be compromised. Birdie’s rules were clear – if the pizza arrived late, it was always the delivery at fault, never the customer.
He only had one more delivery, and then he could go home and try to forget everything. He could forget that his grandfather was back, and he could forget about all the grandfather-related skeletons in his closet. He could forget he even had a closet.
Dan pushed his way through the gawkers at the back of the mob, squeezing past teenagers and in between couples. At his bike he realized that getting it started and then back on to the road was going to be impossible. It didn’t have enough grunt to intimidate the crowds into parting and even if it did he doubted his boss would appreciate the adverse publicity it’d bring.
The crowd shifted and seemed to move as one organism. Its many heads turned together, suddenly catching sight of the celebrity. Dan couldn’t resist looking as well, and saw a cluster of black suited men and women pushing their way through the outer rings of fans. Dan caught glimpses of a girl in their protective circle and he could tell she wasn’t comfortable with the attention. Her head was down and her hands were up to her face trying to block out the calls and screams. She wore shades and a baseball cap but Dan recognized her from the posters being thrust in the air by loyal fans all around him.
The flashes of cameras lit up her face behind the impressive wall of retainers and each time the cameras surged forward Miranda seemed to shrink back. The group were finding it difficult navigating the mob as well and for all their bulk and determination they didn’t seem capable of knocking down the fans, especially with all the cameras present.
A reporter hitched herself up onto the van next to Dan’s bike and with a hand from her assistant, managed to scuttle up to the roof. In less than thirty seconds she preened herself and stood with the hotel masterfully presented behind her. A cameraman was shooting film from across the street, clear of the chaos. Dan could tell that her microphone was transmitting live. Its signal sung into the night joining the chorus of other feeds from the dozen or so reporters at the scene.
At the entrance to the hotel another small group of Miranda Brody’s people waited, but the gulf between the two groups seemed to be getting larger.
Dan looked at his watch.
Then he looked back up at the hotel across the street. The girls were probably pressing their little faces against the glass screaming their little hearts out. Everywhere he looked he saw the same thing: ecstatic screams, red faces, open mouths, posters of the pop star.
But the one they were all screaming for looked more like a scared little girl than a media magnet. It didn’t seem fair. The situation was ridiculous and without even the hint of a police presence it wasn’t going to improve. And that meant Dan’s final delivery would be delayed.
He closed his eyes, rubbing at them to clear the image of his shaggy, wide-eyed and bearded grandfather. He was getting a headache. Two loud-mouthed girls shoved him as they made their way to the front of the crowd. His bike teetered a little and other people started to move around it leaving Dan with a vision of chipped paint or a toppled bike.
Blue lightning streaked across his eyes as he opened them. Sometimes he hated the city.
More fans jostled around him, their screams pushing against him like a physical force. The pack surged forward and then back a little when it hit the ring of security. Dan felt himself getting pulled along. His bike was just out of reach.
He felt the electricity just under his skin now.
A part of him wanted to taser the whole bunch and leave them convulsing in the night. He looked around for another option but all he found was more tear-streaked hysteria.
It seemed inevitable.
His fingers twitched.
With another look at his besieged bike, Dan made the decision to save the girl. He clenched his fist and let the idea of stunning the crowd fall away.
He had other options.
The reporter on top of the van held her hair in place as she spoke to the unseen audience. He concentrated on the signals buzzing around her and isolated the woman’s mobile phone, accessing its number and contacts list. It was quite extensive and included a number of other industry reporters, many of whom were probably prowling through the crowds trying to get closer to the pinned celebrity.
Dan pulled out his own phone and mentally composed a text. Using his control over the electrical world he dragged the database of numbers from the reporter’s phone and brought it across to his own. The message was then sent to dozens of other numbers, some of them close by. Dan allowed himself to track them at least in the short term, but soon the signals were buzzing in all directions like a swarm of invisible wasps. It was a nice development.
He watched with satisfaction as the woman on the van reflexively touched her pocket. She had taken a break from directly talking to the camera and pulled out her phone. She looked at it closer and then across to the pack of Miranda’s security. Dan smiled as he saw the reporter’s face change from one of blank surprise to a more cunning flash of excitement.
The mobile network suddenly surged again as the texts continued flying back and forth through the invisible web of people and their phones. With a little effort Dan managed to heighten the urgency, duplicating messages around him and thrusting them in different directions, spinning them into oblivion.
The message was the same though.
And the people started to receive it and immediately reacted. The woman on the van slid down to the pavement right next to Dan. Her skirt rode up her thigh and she tried to pull it down as she raced across to her partner on the other side of the road. He was already gunning the car’s acceler
ator.
Other people started hurrying down towards the north end of the street like lemmings and behind them the parked vehicles hummed into action. More lights streaked across in all directions as cars pulled illegal u-turns and nearly ran down the scuttling fans and other gawking people.
Miranda Brody’s group remained pinned against the window of the hotel. They had received the message as well and Dan could see at least two of them puzzling over their phones.
“All in a day’s work,” Dan smirked and climbed on to his bike, kicking the stand back and rolling it to the roadside. He slipped his helmet on and turned the key. The street was already emptying and he had a clear passage to the south end of the street, just as he had planned.
A man grabbed his arm as he began to move off, surprising Dan. He struggled to free himself but the man held on. It was one of Brody’s people, all dark shades and expensive suits.
“Did you do that?” the man asked. He pulled off his shades and looked directly at Dan, eyeball to eyeball. “Did you just do what I think you did?”
Dan shook his arm again, pulling himself free.
“Man, I didn’t do anything,” Dan said. “This is all your mess.”
He kick started his bike and roared up the street, but the man’s eyes stayed on his back. Dan couldn’t resist a glance in his side mirror. Behind him he caught the convergence of Brody’s two groups of people as they ushered their star inside the hotel. Some of them were looking towards him but he didn’t care about them anymore.
He had his bike and a clear path to the last job.
The message he sent was already erased from his phone and the people who flocked to the other entrance of the hotel would later be wondering who sent them the text. Young celebrities were well known for media stunts so when they heard that a decoy was drawing their attention at the front of the hotel while the real Miranda was only just arriving at the back, there wasn’t anything to question.
Chapter 4
The Mad Russian
The skies were always steel grey in the old country, reflecting the hard land beneath, and the constant of death all around. In his youth, so distant now and entwined with the mists of invention and re-invention, he would often watch the skies for signs. The old women nodded at him, knowing but not knowing, and the men walked around him, eyes averted. He was never young, though, and no one knew his story or his blood. He was simply there one day, walking through the village, eyes to the skittering clouds which seemed to glow with far-away lightning. No one asked where he came from. There were rumors, frequent crossings of chests and pursed lips, but no questions.
They named him after the Hebrew woman at the edge of the village who took him in, and then they tried to forget about him and the storm of that day which threatened but never really broke.
In his office overlooking Collins Street, thousands of miles and many decades later, Galkin watched as a new storm brewed in the distance. So much had changed since those early days, but more recently, storms like the one outside brought him back to those older times. He still watched the skies for signs, but decided long ago to make his own way in the world instead of waiting. Looking back at his reflection in the window he realized just how far his strategy had spread from one hemisphere to the next, from one generation to the next. Losing five years had made everything that much clearer. The pattern was becoming unmistakable. And it gave him some pleasure.
Even at the end of his life he could see the potential of the world, the possibility of his legacy.
“Contact has been made?” he asked without turning back to the room. His breath frosted on the glass.
The boy behind him was slouching on a sofa, boots crossed at his ankles. It irritated Galkin but the boy was worth overlooking a few insolent indiscretions. Sohail had been with him for nearly ten years, raised on the fringe of Melbourne with a purpose in mind, a part to play. As Halo, the boy had been one of Galkin’s Small Gods, bringers of chaos, the generation of broken hope. The memories brought a faint smile to his face, creased as it was.
“Danny met his mum this afternoon,” Halo said, flipping through a magazine. “Had a chat over some chicken.”
“How is he?” Galkin asked softly, the breath clouding the glass again.
Halo dropped the magazine and shrugged. The mirror reflection of the boy played with Galkin’s mind and for a second he thought he caught glimpses of his own son and then his grandson. The movement was so natural, so unguarded. Galkin turned around.
It was not Halo’s style to be so casual.
“You play with me, Sohail? You withhold from me? From me?”
Halo straightened up quickly, stood up and clasped his hands behind his back, at attention like the little soldier he was. Galkin held his stare for a few more seconds, the temptation to reprimand further, tantalizingly close, prickling his skin, ready to strike.
“Dan’s fine, he’s good.”
Behind Galkin, the skies darkened. Halo noticed: it was clear in his eyes.
“He knows you’re back in town,” Halo continued. “Theresa told him you were back, looking for him. She did what she was told.”
Galkin nodded once. The ploy to send the mother was a risk, but to announce his own return in person, to just appear before the boy, was unthinkable. The mother’s fractured state of mind, her cocktail of guilt and remorse and anger had its purpose. She had always been easily manipulated, although not altogether trustworthy. It was a gamble, of course, but a necessary one in the fine act of setting up his grandson for the next move. Perhaps, the final move.
“You worry me some of these times, Sohail,” Galkin said. “We will not fail.”
Halo relaxed slightly, hands shifting from his back to the pockets of his jacket. Galkin could sense it in the subtle shift of adrenalin, the softening of the edges. He blinked and saw the boy as a collection of electrical impulses, connected, heightened and then receding. The fine network was right there in front of him, so precious and so vulnerable.
Just a prick here or a scramble there. Such little alterations and the boy could be a twitching mess on the floor. Maimed, broken, dead: it was all possible.
“Danya…” he sighed, dismissing Halo with his hand. The storm spread across the city, turning the late afternoon into night. Up and down the street, and even across the city, lights were flickering on, fighting back the darkness. But Galkin knew that sometimes the darkness just had to come out. There could be no stopping what needed to happen; the pain would be fleeting in the grand scheme of things, the transformation worth every tear, every bruise on his grandson’s body.
He ran his fingers across the glass, tracing the line of his own face. Danya was seventeen now, almost a man, but cut off from his father and grandfather. Aimless, wandering. Galkin frowned at himself, taking the wordless blame for his son’s failure, his unearned hubris. The signs were there early, in childhood; the irrational responses, the urgency, the desperation to be seen and heard and, worse, the need to be listened to. No child demanded more from its parents. Galkin could still hear the cries, the high-pitched wail of his son which seemed to carry itself through infancy and into childhood. But it didn’t stop there; rather, it seemed to intensify, to careen its way through adolescence and then into adulthood.
Many times he wished death upon his son, his own blood; but there were lines you could not cross.
The son ultimately perished in the flames of his own creation and Galkin noted some kind of poetry in that. He could not articulate it, of course, and had no real desire to do so; but there was no doubt that dying in such an irreversible, public manner seemed to reflect the nature of his son.
He sighed, and then pushed himself through the window; his fingers pressing into the suddenly malleable surface, peeling it back so he could step out and onto the impossibly narrow ledge outside. The night air was charged with the coming storm and as Galkin breathed out he thought he could feel the city’s undulating energy enter him.
When his whole body passed thr
ough the window, it closed up behind him, perfect again – remade. It was a simple matter for him to spread the molecules, tease them apart to let him through. People often forgot that the Mad Russian was more than a simple parlor magician.
There was real power in his blood.
In fact, there was real power in all of his blood. His attention turned to the west, down into the metropolis where his grandson slaved away at a pathetic job, serving pathetic humans their pathetic and fleeting desires. It suddenly appeared prophetic the way Danya was lost to him in such a bleak, colorless world. And now, five years later he would bring his boy back into his rightful position.
“Pain will transform you, bring you back to me.”
Inside the office, Halo edged towards the door. The boy was familiar with Galkin’s power, but such unnatural actions like walking through walls, still managed to capture an audience, even a streetwise one. Galkin let him go without a word or even a glance. Halo was, after all, simply a mouse scurrying back to the streets. He was a good boy, really. Useful, resourceful, perhaps even a little like Galkin himself. But in the end he was not blood.
And therefore he was ultimately expendable.
Chapter 5
Dan
Back at his apartment, nestled in between a Chinese restaurant and a Skin and Beauty salon, Dan kicked off his trainers and folded himself into the sofa, swinging his legs across the arm rest to the chair beside him. From that angle he could clearly see the television as well as stretch himself out fully to unlock the kinks he’d collected on his pizza delivery run.
Outside he heard the police and ambulance sirens. A helicopter swept low over the city and a car alarm was droning down in the basement car park across the street. But Dan was home, and out of what was turning into an impressive rain storm. His shoes were off, his phones were on silent, and he could breathe slowly again.
He shared the second-storey place with Brian and Noah, both of them in their twenties and earning decent salaries. Dan had met them through Brian’s little brother, at a time when they were desperate to replace a recently absconded flatmate. Dan was still in high school but he was juggling enough part time jobs to pay thirds in the rent. And he was the only serious option in a series of unsuitable applicants.